


Insane in the Membrane

by NeoVenus22



Category: Firefly, Lost, Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>There's no one else.  No one will take you.  No one wants you.  A ship without a crew, floating uselessly in the harbor.  No dock.  No port.  Capsizing.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Insane in the Membrane

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Lost season 1, Veronica Mars through I believe 1x21 'A Trip to the Dentist', Firefly general series

_Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule._ -Friedrich Nietzsche

 

"Welcome to your new home, Mr. Reyes."

Hurley glanced around. He didn't like it here. The walls were too gray. So were the people. It seemed tiny, and not just because he was a large man.

"Make yourself comfortable."

The only empty chair was at a too-small wooden table that was already populated with a handful of crazy. There was a thin, wan girl with dark stringy hair, her knees drawn to her chest. She was mumbling to herself. The other occupant was, by all standards, the most normal-looking one there, save for his freaky beard. Blondie was reading a magazine, frowning at it.

Hurley sat down.

The girl's head lifted sharply. "Killer."

Hurley moved to get up, but even then, he was sort of captivated by the look in her eye. "There's no one else. No one will take you. No one wants you. A ship without a crew, floating uselessly in the harbor. No dock. No port. Capsizing."

Hurley sat back down.

Blondie was staring at her, too.

"Killers. All of us. The body is only a vessel, the flesh is already dead. We slay mind and spirit and soul. Life is snuffed, a wisp of gray into the air, and then poof! Nothing." She giggled slightly, then looked stricken, dropping her head back down as if the other two no longer existed.

"Dude," said Hurley succinctly.

"Now, River, you don't want to go scaring our new friend, do you?" said the orderly with practiced serenity. The smile on his face was one that could not be fazed. (Then again, it was possible that he was more drugged up than his patients.)

"He's in a mental institution," said Blondie. "He's already scared."

"Duncan," said the orderly, eyebrows furrowing ever-so-slightly to convey disappointment of a sort. Blondie lowered his head back to his magazine. Hurley hid a smile. "Group is at six," the serene one said, and walked away.

"I'm Hurley," he said to Blondie.

"Hugo," said the freaky girl.

Hurley didn't even want to know how she knew that. "Um, yeah."

"Duncan," Blondie introduced himself. "And that's River."

Hurley smiled tightly. "Big happy family."

"Happiness is a figment of imagination," River declared, perhaps the most lucid statement she'd issued yet.

"I'm beginning to like her more and more," Duncan confessed with a slight grin.

"She does hold a certain blunt charm," Hurley agreed. Duncan didn't seem that insane. Then again, neither did Hurley. "Who's imagination, River?" he asked pleasantly.

"Everyone's. The illusion of happiness is family and friends with smiles like crescent moons," River said. "But the moon has phases. It waxes and wanes." River, on the other hand, had undoubtedly found the line that crossed between genius and insanity, and not only crossed it, but leapt over it like an Olympian.

Duncan was a shade paler. "Nobody's perfect."

"At least, nobody here."

In the following days, Hurley and Duncan amused themselves by going through jigsaw puzzles. There were only two in the common room, and one was missing several pieces (Duncan said that a former resident had eaten them in order to staunch their evil brain waves). But it kept them quiet. And River, for whatever reason, liked to watch, so she kept quiet, too. After two weeks of this calm activity, a grateful nurse took it upon herself to present the duo each with new puzzles.

"Here's one for you too, River," the nurse said with a patient smile, handing the girl a box. River lowered her knees, which had been up to her chin, and studied the case, turning it upside-down and rattling the pieces inside.

"Cats," she observed.

"Yes," said the nurse, her joy clearly wavering. "Cats."

"A cat's a saint when there are no mice about."

Sensing approaching danger, Hurley glanced pleadingly at Duncan, who shook his head and whispered, "I don't like cats. I like dogs."

"Hey, River," Hurley interrupted. "I like cats. Do you wanna switch?" He waved his box at her. "I got a nice flower garden."

She cocked her head to one side and exchanged boxes without a word. The nurse, tired relief in her eyes, turned to Hurley curiously. "Why are you in here, again?"

"Paranoid schizophrenia," Hurley responded without missing a beat. "Sometimes I think I'm Reagan."

Duncan giggled, the nurse rolled her eyes, and River ripped open her box, sending pieces flying. The nurse sighed and walked away.

"Why are you here, Dunc?" asked Hurley, scooping fragments of the puzzle into River's box.

Duncan hefted one shoulder. "I see dead people."

Hurley laughed. "No, seriously."

Duncan's gaze was calm. "No. Seriously."

"Lilies blooming in a field," said River on the floor beside Hurley, and at this phrase, Duncan's placid expression made way for widened eyes and paling skin. Hurley glanced over his shoulder at River, who was already putting together pieces of her flower puzzle, ignoring the both of them completely. She didn't seem to realize the odd effect her phrase had on Duncan, if she knew she'd spoken at all.

And just when Hurley had thought Duncan was the most stable of the group, he'd gone and just lost all of his marbles right there.

"It wasn't my fault," said Duncan, abandoning his task of attempting to get into his puzzle box, and instead drawing his legs up on his chair to press his knees to his chest. "I wasn't, I didn't!"

River looked up from the flower pot she was constructing. "The Donut's crumbling," she announced, but no one paid her any mind.

Hurley, abandoning the puzzles altogether, beckoned over an orderly, who took a shaking Duncan off to his room, muttering about how it wasn't his fault, and he didn't remember, and why wouldn't she leave him alone.

Hurley sighed. "This place is gonna make me crazy."


End file.
